Before the Fact
by Suburban Slasher
Summary: The story of a letter written by Samwise Gamgee, and its travel across Middle Earth. Set many years after Return of the King, rife with spoilers. Implies FrodoxSam, MerryxPippin, AragornxLegolas, and AragornxArwen.
1. Before the Fact

"Before the Fact"

by Princess of Pain

Oh, Mr. Frodo... will you ever forgive your foolish Sam?

For I am foolish, and no mistake. I am certainly a sight older, but I am just as silly as I was last time we met. I didn't mean to hurt nobody, honest, least of all you... but I guess I'm just not clever enough to figure things out without hurtin' nobody in the end. No, not clever. I'm just as stupid as good old Gandalf always said Pip was. Maybe more so.

You wanted me to move into Bag-End. I knew what you were askin', occourse, I ain't that stupid. It made me kind of wonder, whether or not you heard what I said. _But you were asleep!_, my mind says, but this here brain o' mine's hardly reliable. Did you hear and know more than I ever guessed? I don't know, Mr. Frodo. I was never a poet like Mr. Bilbo. I can't say what I think; even if it sounds nice in my head, it gets all tangled up afore it ever reaches my fool mouth. I don't know why you left me to finish your book.

But... but I 'member.

Oh, yes. Not even Samwise Gamgee could forget the touch of his Master.

But... oh, I was a simpleton! I liked Rosie, sure 'nuff, yes. Jus' like her name, she was. But she wasn't what I wanted. But I didn't mean to hurt her with no good reason--I'd of had to explain, and I'd of bunged up the job, as usual. An' how could she have understood? Things are different, so different in the Shire than in the Wide World. In the Shire, cousins marry cousins and naught is thought of it. In the World, that's thought to be a disgustin' practice. Yet in the World... other loves take place.

Look at Strider and Legolas. I know, Strider married Arwen. But I married Rosie. I think--not to say that my thoughts're right or important, you understand--that Strider took Arwen for the same reason. An' I think all three of 'em suffer for it.

And dear Merry an' Pip, those two old fools, still living in Buckland together. No one else seems to know. Oh, they wedded--not t' each other, I mean, but to fine hobbit-lasses. But they ride together an' laugh together, an' even I can see that each one of 'em only has eyes for the other.

Are all of us fools, Mr. Frodo?

I think we may be.

I guess I could of left. We could of left, I mean. But there was Rose, and then Elanor, and all my little loves later on... all thirteen, can y' believe that? I couldn't do that to 'em. I had to be father and husband.

But I was never quite whole again, after you left for the Havens.

"You were meant to be solid and whole, and you will be." I 'member you saying that, sure's I 'member my own name. And I guess you thought that if you left--if you took away half of what was tearing me up--that I'd be a whole. But it ain't true, Master, ain't true atall. I've never been so tore up since you went to the Havens. It's more like you took out half of me, an' there's nothing sadder or smaller than half a halfling, no mistake there. I never was too much to start with, not near the hero folks like to think I am, an' without you, I'm even less. "Frodo an' his faithful Sam", not "bumbling, thickheaded Sam all on his lonesome."

I did my best, though. I made my bed right and proper, I did, so I deserved to lay in it. I took care o' Rosie and the children. Elanor married some thirty years afore, and went out in the wide World on 'er own--she's so much braver than her silly dad. An' Goldilocks wedded a son of Pippin--thought that would please you. I took right good care of Bag-End, nothing there has changed, and I did just as good a job, I hope, with the Shire when I was Mayor. The flowers and trees that grow by the grace of Galadriel 're all still there. And once a year, on your birthday, all the little hobbit-boys and hobbit-girls would gather 'round the door, an' I'd get out the Red Book. They always said just what I told you they'd say: "Tell us about Frodo the Nine-Fingered, and of the War of the Ring!"

No one's forgotten in the Shire. I've done at least that much. And everyone's healthy and strong, and the verge and hills are passing fair, especially in the sunrise.

But... now... it's not flowers I'm wanting to see.

Flowers make me think roses, which make me think Rosie. Which make me think about the fact that she's died, just this past month. Elanor's holding up to it beautifully, better'n Tolman, and Robin. When I see her tonight, I'll tell her to take especial care of her brothers 'n' sisters. Shouldn't take much prompting, I'm sure, particularly when this is gonna be one of my last requests.

I'm leaving, you see.

I want travel again. Never thought I'd say it, but I do. I want the Sea--I only got a glimpse, an' I still remember how it was. No words... a living field of water, I guess is the closest I can get. I want the ships, and the Havens. More'n that, I want you again.

I want to say that I still love you.

Crickey, but I'm pathetic! You'd think I was still a lovesick boy of five-and-twenty! Not a chance o' that happening again. I just reached my two-and-hundredth year on Middle-Earth. And two-and-hundred is time enough for me.

Well, here's a chapter that'll never be in the Red Book, that none'll ever see. I hope you do, though, Mr. Frodo. You'd be eleventy-four now, if you're still living, the Valar forbid you should die. I suspect, though, that we've got a drop or two of time left to us. I've a few more years in me as hobbits go, an' you were a right proper Ring-bearer. I've noticed that Ring-bearers don't die too easy.

And maybe there isn't death in the Havens. Maybe you're still as young and beautiful as I remember you bein', when you were only three-and-fifty. When you left. Maybe I can get young again, look at what the Elves did for Strider. Maybe nothing else has to change.

And maybe I'll lay this... this I-don't-know-what on your grave.

But I rather like the idea of you reading this. I can sort of see it in my head: your eyes, like two dwarf-gems, reading an' reacting to everything; me shifting nervously from one foot to another. I can see that the parchment's now stained with salt, an' that the ink's running in places from little splashes of water, an' it's wrinkled and worn from me folding and unfolding and refolding it, over and over, during the journey. The one thing I can't see is what emotion's gonna be in those fantastic eyes o' yours when you're done... but I guess that's not in my control, so's there's no point in dwelling on it, is there?

I always was somethin' of an optimist, you see, Mr. Frodo.

Comes of being a fool.

_-end-_

AFTER: When I finished "Return of the King" (and got over that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when a book turns out right in the end), I did a dangerous thing... and started to dwell. Being the sick slasher that I am, I didn't agree at all with the idea of Sam simply marrying Rosie and letting Frodo go off by himself. The little lovesick hobbit followed "Mr. Frodo" straight into the pits of Mordor, but was reluctant to follow him to the Grey Havens? (Understandable, of course, since Sam had probably had all adventurousness thrashed out of him by the War of the Ring... but still.) With that in mind, I began to formulate an idea for a li'l fic post-books. Then, flipping through the appendices of "King", I looked at the timeline Tolkien provided... and jumped a little. After the death of Rosie, it says, when Sam is 102 years old, he packs up his things and leaves the Shire forever, leaving Bag-End and The Red Book behind with his daughter Elanor. No one ever sees him again (supposedly), though it is generally believed that he, as the last of Ring-bearers, found a ship and went to the Grey Havens after his master.

I swear to Buddy Christ that Tolkien did this on purpose.


	2. Hale

"Hale"

by Princess of Pain

_"One is the Ringbearer, frightened and strong;  
Two is his servant, who follows in song;  
Three are prince-halflings, both knights and true friends;  
Four is a Ranger, who rules in the end;  
Five is an Elf-prince, both lovely and tough;  
Six is a Dwarf-fighter, bloody and rough;  
Seven, a Human prince, born of despair;  
Eight is a White Rider, scorched through the air;  
Nine is Many-Colors sealing his tomb;  
And ten is Ring, Shadow, and Sauron, our doom."_

Ugh. I shudder a little on the inside. My eyes wander to Pippin's--they always do, yes, and so what, but with a purpose this time. And I can see that the little ditty has had the same effect on him. Oh, he still smiles, but there's an unsettled look in those hazel eyes.

I don't know who made up the damn thing, and if I did, I'd string him up and pull all the hair off his toes. Some brainless hobbit-boy from Hardbottle, I'll wager. All the little ones adore hearing tales of the War; occasionally they hook in me and Pip for a tale or two, but it's all mostly from Sam and his Red Book. I wish they wouldn't. Any fool could see that it pains him. Pip even said he didn't like the way Sam's eyes go all sad like a puppy when he tells the story, and if Pip isn't a fool, then Sauron's a barmaid.

Could've been anyone that made it up, though.

And don't get me wrong, now, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a mite appreciative of bein' called "prince-halfling" (even if that was all a misunderstanding that left a bunch of Gondorans feeling rather silly) and a knight, and above all else a true friend. It's not exactly an un-complimentary rhyme, and like as not, it's just used to keep time with some twerp's jumping-game. But while these little jumping hobbit-children have never seen naught but field and sky and stream, while their knowledge of the outside World is limited to Bree--a place most sensible hobbits prefer not to visit, probably why we all ended up there--I was there. I saw Isingard rising up from a charcoal valley like the finger of a dead god, smoking from the fires of forging and pockmarked from the efforts of Ents. I saw their flippant Many-Colors in the depths of despair, felt the pull of the charm which wove through his voice.

None of the children who chant about him were even alive when he tried to take the Shire as Sharkey.

And "Sauron, our doom"? I never saw Mordor, thank the gods and good fortune, but I saw the empty fear in Frodo and Sam's faces even in sleep after they were rescued from that awful, cursed place. I smelled stink and ash and evil on their skins. And I watched as neither could quite get back in step with Shirehood once they'd returned.

I know just enough of Mordor, and of Sauron and his blasted filthy Ring... to know that referring to them as "our doom" is vast understatement. It only works if you don't have stronger words. Maybe the Elves once did, I should ask Legolas, but not us hobbits. We know only our earth.

...heh. Got a little poetry rattling around in my skull. Bet'cha I could've finished the Red Book.

"'ere now! There's two more mushrooms on your plate than mine, you dirty thief!"

I glare at Pippin from across the breakfast table which I'd forgotten about after that rhyme. "You never had a head for numbers, Pip. Aside from which, wasn't it you who dished out eleventies, and wasn't it you who took three extra dumplings?" I raise my foot and poke him in the belly with my toes. He jumps and gives a little squeak. "It's not like you're young, or even youngish. Your paunch could use a bit of thinning, not more dumplings."

Pippin vaguely pouts, something that pleases me immensely. He always was adorable. Even more so with his lower lip poochin' out, making the same puppy eyes he once accused Sam of.

Our banter is light, childish, much the same talk that we've had over the past sixty years or so. Not because we don't have heavy thoughts--I know that Pippin, in whatever pea-sized gray nub he considers to be his mind, is dwelling on the same thing I am. Things, rather. Mordor, the ever-growing shadow. Isingard, reaching up and out. The terrors of Moria and of the bridge of Khazar-dûn. Lothlórien, unspeakable beauty and the death of time. The utter slaughter and the loss of Boromir--gods, I miss him--at the river Rauros. The orc-tribes, the Uruk-Hai, the White Hand, the White Rider, the Black Hand, the Ringbearer, the Gollum. We can never leave it, none of us. The whole damned War is sunk into our minds, and somehow, it's worse now than when we were livin' it. Then we only had to take it one day at a time. Now it's the whole thing, every day and second and drop of sweat and blood, all of it at once. All the time.

And we never, unless forced or unless we're with our comrades... we **never** speak of it at all.

And if maybe I kiss my wife goodnight and leave her alone in her snug, small bed (too small for two), and maybe I creep down the hall to an empty room with a snug, slightly larger bed (this one big enough for two hobbits), and maybe Pippin creeps to the same room after kissing his own wife, and hours after we've fallen asleep (tensies is far too old for bouncing the old bedsprings, sadly enough), one or both of us wakes up screaming about how he can't walk anymore, no more, and how he'd rather die than touch orc-food, and how Gandalf couldn't possibly be dead... what of it?

The door slams open. I--while these black thoughts have been passing through my brain and running around inside it--have just engaged Pippin in a rousing game of footsies. The pair of us jerk away from each other, like we'd been bitten. I see a guilty flush in Pip's face, and judgin' from the burning in my face, I'm turning the same color.

"What do ya--" I start, then immediately stop again when I see who it is.

It's Elanor, Sam's daughter. She must be the most beautiful hobbit-woman to walk the earth, "and no mistake", as Sam would probably add. Cor, I haven't seen her since Elfstan was born... has it really been thirty years? She isn't looking too interested in her own beauty at the moment, though. She looks rather like her father just died. In her arms is the Red Book.

Her father--

"Gods! What happened!" Pip cries, rising from his seat at the breakfast table. I do the same, at the same time.

"It's Daddy." Grief wrings her voice into a wavering moan. "Daddy... he's... he's left. Last week... he left me the Book. Said it was important. I left my Fastred, I needed to tell you... I've been crying every second. I don't know what to do. Mum dies, now... now Daddy's gone, and he wouldn't say to where..."

Before we run to catch her, just before she would have crumbled, I steal another glance at him, and he at me.

We both know... somehow... where Sam went, and that he will never come back.

-----

Pip and I go through Bag-End. Not to scavenge. But to see if he left a sign... of anything.

It takes the rest of the day. We pick up old letters and glance through them. Gaze at pictures of people we've never seen, and maps of places even we have never traveled to. Place our hands on trunks which cannot be opened without force. A huge pile of notes and scrawls and journal entries that went into the Book is the most fascinating thing.

Then, by chance, Pippin finds Sam's old traveling-cloak that had made its way back from Rivendell--not from Mordor, that cloak is enshrined in Gondor. "I'll miss the old fool," he says as he picks it up. "Won't be the same, walkin' past Bag-End and not seeing him puttering around in his garden--"

And out falls a letter. A killer letter.

We read it, side by side, Pippin roughly four lines behind me the entire time. We both nudge each other at the mention of our names, then blush at the mention of our love (and yes, it is love, learn to live with it). We marvel at how well Samwise Gamgee, a self-professed fool, can write and know his fellows. He had us all down to the core, he did.

And yet, he must be foolish: in taking a different cloak than this one, he has left what was probably his most important cargo behind.

I finish, and stare thoughtfully at Pip. As he finishes, those eyes o' his immediately meet mine. We already know that we're thinking the same thing; it's the only answer, really. The others had to know what had befallen Sam. We would gladly bear the message; we are old, but we are hale yet. But unlike Frodo and Sam, Pippin and I managed to fit right well back into Shirehood. We don't want to leave, and I doubt that the Havens would take us.

Only Ring-bearers go there.

Ring-bearers... and elves.

"Legolas," we both say at once. Perhaps not today, and perhaps not tomorrow, but someday, Legolas was bound to leave. He'd heard the call of the gulls and, he'd told us, could never find peace until he crossed over the Sea. He is our only messenger who can reach the One and Two of that filthy rhyme now.

Tomorrow, I think I'll send this his way.

But tonight, I'm not quite done staring in my love's eyes.

_-end-_

AFTER: Samwise abandoning the Shire for the Havens is still an interesting topic to me, and if I get some good feedback off this section of the story, then I'll probably write a third section. My original idea was to write one section for each of the main characters--first Sam, then Merry/Pippin ('cuz they're attached at the hips), Legolas and Gimli, Aragorn and Arwen, and finally, Frodo. Maybe I still will. I don't know.

I wrote the jumprope rhyme before the story begins, although I don't want to admit it, 'cuz I don't like it too much.


End file.
